ORDEAL IN OTHERWHERE Page 7

  They came down to the silver strand by a path her companion found. But when Charis would have gone on south, the Warlockian creature brushed about her ankles, uttering now and then an imperative cry, plainly wanting her to remain. At last she dropped down to sit facing the sea, and then, looking about her, she was startled. This was the cove of her first dream exactly.

  “Meerree?” That tongue-tip touch, a sense of reassurance, a small warm body pressed against hers, a feeling of contentment—that all was well . . . coming from her companion or out of some depth within herself? Charis did not know.

  They came out of the sea, though the girl had not seen them swimming in. But these were not a threat like the fork-tail. Charis drew a deep breath of wonder and delight or welcome as the contentment flowered within her. They came on, walking through the wash of the waves, then stood to look at her.

  Two of them, glittering in the sun, sparkling with light. They were shorter than she, but they walked and stood with a delicate grace which Charis knew she would never equal, as if each movement, conscious or unconscious, were a part of a very ancient and beautiful dance. Bands of jewel colors made designs about each throat in gemmed collars, ran down in spirals over chest, waist, thigh, braceleting the slender legs and arms. Large eyes with vertical slits of green pupils were fixed on her. She did not find the saurian shape of their heads in the least repulsive—different, yes, but not ugly, truly beautiful in their own fashion. Above their domed, jewel-marked foreheads stood a sharp V point of spiky growth, a delicate green perhaps two shades lighter than the sea from which they had come. This extended down in two bands, one for each shoulder, wider as if aping wings.

  They wore no clothing, save a belt each from which hung various small implements, and a pair of pouches. Yet their patterned, scaled skin gave the impression of rich robes.

  “Meeerrreeee!” The furred body against hers stirred. Charis could not doubt that was a cry of pleasure. But she did not need that welcome from the animal. She had no fear of these sea ones—the Wyverns surely, the masters—or rather the mistresses—of Warlock.

  They advanced and Charis arose, picking up the furred one, waiting.

  “You are—“ she began in Basic, but a four-digit hand came out, touched her forehead between the eyes. And in that touch was not the feel of cold reptilian flesh but of warmth like her own.

  No words. Rather it was a flow of thought, of feeling, which Charis’s off-world mind turned into speech: “Welcome, Sister-One.”

  The claim of kinship did not disturb Charis. Their bodies were unlike, yes—but that flow of mind to mind—it was good. It was what she wanted now and forever.

  “Welcome.” She found it hard to think, not to speak. “I have come—“

  “You have come. It is good. The journey has been weary, but now it will be less so.”

  The Wyvern’s other hand moved up into the line of Charis’s vision. Cupped against the scaled palm was a disk of ivory-white. And once seeing it, she found she could not look away. A momentary flash of uneasiness at that sudden control and then . . .

  There was no beach, no whispering sea waves. She was in a room with smooth walls that were faintly opalescent as if they were coated with sea-shell lining. A window broke one of those surfaces, giving her a view of open sea and sky. And there was a thick mat spread under that, a covering of fluffy feathers folded neatly upon it.

  “For the weary—rest.”

  Charis was alone except for the furred one she still held. Yet that suggestion or order was as emphatic as if she had heard the words spoken. She stumbled to the mat and lay down, drew the fluffy cover over her bruised and aching body, and then plunged into another time—world—existence . . .

  There was no arbitrary measurement of time where she went, nor was memory ever sharp set enough to give her more than bits and pieces of what she experienced, learned, saw in that other place. Afterward, things she had garnered sank past full consciousness in her mind and rose in time of need when she was unaware that she held such secrets. Schooling, training, testing—all three in one.

  When she awoke again in her windowed room, she was Charis Nordholm still, but also she was someone else, one who had tasted a kind of knowledge her species had never known. She could touch the fringe of that power, hold a little of it; yet the full mystery of it slipped through her fingers much as if she had tried to hold tightly the waters of the sea.

  Sometimes she sensed disappointment in her teachers, a kind of exasperation, as if they found her singularly obtuse just when they hovered on the edge of a crucial revelation, and then her own denseness was a matter of anger and shame for her. She had such limitations. But yet she fought and labored against them.

  Which was the dream—existence in that other world or this waking? She knew the room at times and the Citadel in the island kingdom of the Wyverns, of which it was a part, and other rooms in other places she knew were not the Citadel. She knew sea depths: Had she gone there in body or in her dream? She danced and ran along the sands of shores with companions who sported and played joyously with the same bursting sense of happy release that she knew. That, she believed, was real.

  She learned to communicate with the furred one, if on a limited plane. Tsstu was her name and she was one of a rare species from the forest lands, not merely animal, not quite equivalent to “human,” but a link between such as Charis’s own kind had sought for years.

  Tsstu and the Wyverns and their half-dream existence in which she was caught up, absorbed, in which memory faded into another and far less real dream. But there was to be an awakening as sudden and as racking as that of a warrior startled from slumber by the onslaught of the enemy.

  It came during one of the periods Charis believed real, when she was in the Citadel on an island apart from the land mass where the post stood. She had been teasing her companion Gytha to share dreams with her, a process of communication which swept one wholly adrift in wonder. But the young Wyvern seemed absent-minded and Charis guessed a portion of her attention was elsewhere in rapport with her kind, whom Charis could only reach if they willed it so.

  “There is trouble?” She thought her question, her hand going instinctively to the pouch at her belt in which rested her guide, the carved disk they had given her. She could use it, though haltingly, to control dangerous life such as the fork-tails or to travel. Of course, she could not draw upon the full Power; maybe she never would. Even the Wise One, Gysmay, who was a Reader of Rods, could not say yes or no on that though, in a way Charis did not understand, the elder Wyvern could read the future in part.

  “Not so, Sharer of my Dreams.” But even as the answer came, Gytha vanished with a will-to-Otherwise. The impression she left—Charis frowned—that faint trail of impression was of trouble, and trouble connected with herself.

  She brought out her guide, felt it warm comfortingly on her palm. Practice with it—that was important. Each time she bent the Power to her will she was that much more proficient. The day was fair; she would like to be free in it. What harm in her using the disk ashore? And Tsstu had been restless. For both of them to return to the moss meadow might be enjoyable. Memory moved—the Survey man there. Somehow she had forgotten about him, just as the post and the traders had receded so far into the dreamy past that they were far less real than a shared dream.

  Cupping the disk, she thought of Tsstu and then heard the answering “Meerreee” from the corridor. Charis pictured the moss meadow, questioned, and was answered with an eager assent. She caught up the small body as it bounded toward her and held it against her as she breathed upon the disk and made a new mind-picture—the meadow as she remembered it most vividly by that solitary fruit tree.

  Then Tsstu wriggled out of Charis’s hold, pranced on her hind legs, waving her front paws in the air ecstatically, until the girl laughed. She had not felt as young and free as this for as long as she could remember. To be Ander Nordholm’s assistant had once absorbed all her interest and energy, and then there had been no
thing but dark shadows until she had seen the Wyverns coming to her through the sea. But now, no Wyverns—nothing but Charis and Tsstu, removed from the need for care, in a wide and welcoming stretch of countryside.

  Charis threw out her arms, put up her head, so that the warmth of the sun was directly on her face. Her hair, which always intrigued the Wyverns so, she had caught back with a tie the same green as the clinging tunic she now wore.

  This time her feet were shielded from hurt with sandals of shell seemingly impervious to wear, yet as light as if she were barefoot. She felt as if she might emulate Tsstu and dance on the moss. She had taken a few tentative steps when she heard it, a sound which sent her backing swiftly into the cover of the tree branches—the hum of an airborne motor.

  A copter was coming from the southeast. In general appearance it was like any other atmosphere flyer imported from off-world. Only this one had service insignia, the Winged Planet of Survey surmounted by a gold key. It was slanting away, out to sea in the general direction of the Citadel.

  In all the time she had been with the natives, they had had no contact that she had known of with any off-worlders save herself. Nor had the Wyverns ever mentioned such. For the first time Charis speculated about that. Why had she herself never asked any questions about the government base, made any attempt to get the Wyverns to take or send her there? She had seemed to forget her own species while she was with the Warlockians. And that was so unnatural that she was uneasy when she realized it now.

  “Meeerrreee?” A paw patted her ankle. Tsstu had caught Charis’s thought or at least her uneasiness. But the animal’s concern was only partly comforting.

  The Wyverns had not wanted Charis to return to her own kind. It had been their interference on her first awakening that had kept her from retracing her trail to the post, had made her take cover from the flyer in the night, avoid the Survey man. She had had only kindness—yes—and an emotion which her species could term love, and care and teaching from them. But why had they brought her here, tried to cut her off from her own blood? What use did they have for her?

  Use—a cold word, and yet one her mind fastened upon now only too readily. Jagan had brought her here to use as a contact with these same wielders of strange powers. Then she had been skillfully detached from the post, led to the meeting by the sea. And understanding that, Charis broke free of the enchantment which had bound her to the Otherwhere of the Wyverns.

  The copter was out of sight. Had it been summoned for her? Charis was sure not. But she could have been there when it arrived. She called Tsstu, caught her up, and concentrated upon the disk to return.

  Nothing happened. She was not back in the Citadel room but still under the tree in the meadow. Again Charis set her mind to the task of visualizing the place she wanted to be and it was there, as a vivid picture in her mind, but only in her mind.

  Tsstu whimpered, butted her head under Charis’s chin; the girl’s fear had spread to her companion. For the third time, Charis tried the disk. But it was as if whatever power had once been conducted through that was turned off at the source. Turned off and by the Wyverns. Charis was as certain of that as if she had been told so, but there was one way to test the truth of her guess.

  She raised the disk for the fourth time, this time painting a mind-picture of the plateau top where the mysterious feast had been spread. Sea wind in her hair, rock about -- She was just where she had aimed to go. So—she could use the disk here, but she could not return to the native stronghold.

  They must have known that she had left the Citadel. They did not want her to return while the visitor was there—or ever?

  One of those half messages from Tsstu which came not as words or pictures but obliquely: something wrong near here . . .

  Charis looked from the sea to the slit of valley where she had seen the fork-tail, secure in her knowledge that neither the sea beast nor the clakers could attack a disk carrier. From here she could see nothing amiss below. Two clakers screeched and made for her and then abruptly sheered away and fled for their nesting holes. Charis used the disk to reach the scrap of beach below the cliff. She had forgotten to bring Tsstu but she could see the black blot against the red of the rock where the little creature was making a speedy descent.

  Tsstu reached the bottom of the cliff and vanished into the cloak of vegetation. Charis moved inland, the mental call bringing her to the spring.

  A broken bush, torn turf. Then, on a stone, a dark sticky smear about which flying things buzzed or crawled sluggishly. In the edge of the pool, something gleamed in a spot of sun.

  Charis picked up the stunner—not just any off-world weapon but one she knew well. When Jagan had had her in his cabin on the spacer to give her those instructions in what he intended to be her duties, she had seen such a side arm many times. The inlay of cross-within-a-circle set into the butt with small black vors stones had been a personal mark. It was out of the bounds of possibility that two weapons so marked could be here on Warlock.

  She tried to fire it, but the trigger snapped on emptiness; its charge was exhausted. The trampled brush, the torn-up sod, and that smear -- Charis forced herself to draw her finger through the congealed mess. Blood! She was sure it was blood. There had been a fight here and, judging by the lost stunner, the fight must have gone against the weapon’s owner or his weapon would not be left so. Had he faced a fork-tail? But there was no path of wreckage such as that beast had left on its pursuit of her, traces of which still remained to be seen. Only there had been a fight.

  Tsstu made a sound deep in her throat, an “rrrrurrgh” of anger and warning. Moved purely by impulse, Charis caught up Tsstu and used the disk.

  VIII

  The smell caught at Charis’s throat, made her cough, even before she knew the source. This was the post clearing—just as she had aimed for—the bubble of the building rising from bare earth. Or the remains of it, for there were splotched holes in its fabric from which the plasta-cover peeled in scorched and stinking strips. Tsstu spat, growled, communication with Charis firm on the need for immediate withdrawal.

  But there was a prone figure by the ragged hole which had once been a door. Charis started for that—

  “Hoyyy!”

  She whirled, her disk ready. There was someone on the trail which led down the cliff face. He moved faster, waving to her. She could escape at any moment she chose and that knowledge led her to stand her ground. Tsstu spat again, caught a clawed grip of Charis’s tunic.

  From the brush rim of the clearing came a brown animal, trotting purposefully. It walked with its back slightly arched, showing off the bands of lighter color along each side, the fur thick and long. More of the light fur was visible above its eyes. Its ears were small, its face broad, the tail bushy.

  Just out of the bushes it stopped to eye Charis composedly. Tsstu made no more audible protests, but the trembling of her body, her fear of mind, was transmitted to Charis. For the second time the girl readied her disk.

  The man who had waved disappeared from the trail; he must have jumped down the last few feet. Now a whistle sounded from the foliage. The brown animal squatted down where it was. Charis watched warily as the newcomer burst into the clearing in a rush.

  He wore the green-brown of Survey, with the addition of high boots of a dull copper-colored, supple material. On his tunic collar was the glint of metal—the insignia of his corps again modified with a key as it had been on the copter. He was young, though nowadays with the mixture of races and the number of mutants, planet years were hard to guess. Not as tall as the usual Terran breed though, and slender. His skin was an even brown which might be its natural shade or the result of much weathering, and his hair, rather closely cropped to his round skull, was almost as tightly curled, and just as black, as Tsstu’s fur.

  His impetuous break into the open halted and he stood staring at Charis in open disbelief. The brown animal rose and went to him, rubbing against his legs.

  “Who are you?” he demanded in Bas
ic.

  “Charis Nordholm,” she replied mechanically. Then she added, “That beast of yours—he frightens Tsstu—“

  “Taggi? You need not fear him.” The brown animal reared against the man’s thigh and he fondled its head, scratched behind the small ears. “But—a curl-cat!” He was gazing now with almost as great surprise at Tsstu. “Where did you get it? And how did you make friends with it?”

  “Meeerrreeee.” Some of Tsstu’s fear had lessened. She wriggled about in Charis’s arms as if settling herself in a more comfortable position, watching both man and animal with wary interest.

  “She came to me,” Charis fitted the past to the present, “when you were hunting her with that animal!”

  “But I never—“ he began and then stopped “—oh, back in the woods that day Taggi went off on a new scent! But why—who are you?” His tone had a new snap; this was official business now. “And what are you doing here? Why did you hide when I searched here earlier?”

  “Who are you?” she countered.

  “Cadet Shann Lantee, Survey Corps, Embassy-Liaison,” he replied almost in one breath. “You sent that message, the one entered on our pick-up tape, didn’t you? You were here with the traders, though where you were just a little while ago—“

  “I wasn’t here. I have just come.”

  He moved toward her, the animal Taggi remaining where it was. Now his eyes were intent, with a new kind of measurement.

  “You’ve been with them!”

  And Charis had no doubt as to whom that “them” referred.

  “Yes.” She was not prepared to add to that, but he seemed to need no other answer.

  “And you’ve just come here. Why?”

  “What has happened here? That man there—“ She turned toward the body once more but the Survey officer in one swift stride was blocking her view of it.

  “Don’t look! What’s happened? -- Well, I’d like to know that myself. There’s been a raid. But who or why—Taggi and I have been trying to learn what could have happened here. How long have you been with them?”